Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/123805
a seesaw and sloppy first 16 minutes that saw the Irish hold a 26-25 lead. Connecticut then used a 14-3 surge in the final 3:44 of the first half to build a 39-29 halftime cushion with its suffocating defense. UConn freshman Breanna Stewart, last year's National Player of the Year in the high school ranks, tallied a career-high 29 points for the Huskies on 10-of-16 shooting from the floor, high- lighted by a 4-of-5 effort from threepoint range. Conversely, no one for Notre Dame could get going. One of only three teams to average more than 80 points per game this season, the Irish shot an abysmal 29.7 percent from the floor (27 of 74) and were under constant siege by UConn's length inside and ballhawking pressure on the outside, led by senior guard Kelly Faris. A New Standard Fare Notre Dame did not claim the ultimate prize, a national title, like it did in 2001, but the 2012‑13 team left several standards that will be extremely difficult to eclipse: • The 35-2 record was the best winning percentage — .946 — in the program's 36-year history, sur‑ passing the 34-2 (.944) set by the 2001 national champs. The 35 victories tied the single-season record established last year (35-4). • The 30-game winning streak from Dec. 8, 2012, until April 7, 2013, was the second-longest at Notre Dame in any fully sponsored NCAA championship sport in the school's 126 years of athletics. Only the 33 straight wins by the softball team in 2001 surpassed it. • In the final season of its 18-year year history in the Big East, Notre Dame won the Big East Champion‑ ship for the first time by defeating Connecticut 61-59 on March 12. It had previously won outright (2012) or shared (2001) the regular-season title with Connecticut, but had never captured the league tourna‑ ment. This year it was 16-0 during the regular season and also won the tourney. • Head coach Muffet McGraw was the consensus National Coach of the Year for the second time (along with 2001) by sweeping the four major national coaching awards: Naismith, United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA), Associated Press and the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA). She joined Connecticut's Geno Auriemma (2008 and 2009) as just the second NCAA Division I coach ever to sweep the four major national coaching awards twice in his/her career. • This was the first-time ever the Fighting Irish placed two players on the WBCA All-America Team with senior Skylar Diggins — who also won the Nancy Lieberman Award as the nation's top point guard for the second straight year — and junior guard Kayla McBride. Diggins is the lone Irish player to earn a spot on the elite 10-player team for the third consecutive season. • Guard Jewell Loyd was named the USBWA National Freshman of the Year while seamlessly assimilating into the lineup. The team's best athlete and a defensive stopper, she also averaged 12.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game while finishing second in three-pointers (31) and converting a team-best 41.3 percent from behind the arc. • Junior center Natalie Achonwa set a single-season school record with 19 double-doubles with her points (13.8 per game) and rebounds (9.5 per game). • Notre Dame set a school record for sellouts (11) in one season and average attendance at home per game (8,979), finishing sixth nationally in the latter. — Lou Somogyi